Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/456

LXXIV.

It has been seen that no Commencement was held in 1764 ; but that of 1765 was made attractive and interesting. On 30 May some of the Trustees and Faculty met for the purpose and the Trustees then proceeded to the public Hall and several more of their Body at different Times attended during the Day. The Provost, Vice Pro- vost and Professors, followed by the Candidates and Students entered next in their proper Habits and at 10 o'clock the Solemnity was begun by the Provost, with part of the Church Prayers, and an occasional Prayer for the King, the Royal Family, the Benefactors of the College, for the whole Church of Christ and the Propagation of the Gospel and useful Science. There were seven graduates in course : Alexander Alex- ander, who had been a Tutor since January, 1764; Benjamin Alison, son of the Vice-Provost ; John Andrews, of Maryland, who became Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1789 and died as Provost in 1813 ; Thomas Dungan, appointed a Tutor in Janu- ary, 1764, who became Professor of Mathematics in 1766 ; John Patterson, who became Tutor at the same time ; James Sayres, a Scotchman by birth, who took orders in the Church of England, received the degree of M. A. of Kings College in 1774, became Chaplain in De Lancey's Brigade, and died at Fairfield, Connecticut in 1798; and William White, the only son of a Trustee, himself elected a Trustee in 1774, Treasurer for three years from October 1775, President of the Board of Trustees in 1790 and 1791, and well known as the first Bishop of Pennsylvania, and the great organizer of the American Church upon its severance from the Church of England, T whose episcopacy he brought hither in conjunction with Samuel Provost of New York in 1787, and whose Liturgy in its adaptation to the new circumstances in which the Church now found itself, William Smith, the Provost of the College, had more influence in shaping than any other of its ministry. The Provost and his young pupil formed at College an acquaintance which ripened 1 " The venerable father of our Church," so termed by Bishop Hobart in his Address to the New York Convention of 1826.